The First Annual Thuli Ndlovu Lecture

Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

The First Annual Thuli Ndlovu Lecture

Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA will be launching an annual lecture in honour of Thuli Ndlovu. Thuli Ndlovu was assassinated in cold blood on 29 September 2014. The first lecture will be held close to the first anniversary of the assassination, on 24 September 2015. We will continue to hold the Annual Thuli Ndlovu Lecture every year in September.

Thuli was a mother of two girls, a daughter, a fearless activist and the Chairperson of our branch in KwaNdengezi near Marianhill. She resisted the repressive and undemocratic practices of Nqola, an ANC ward councillor. She led the struggle against the sale of land and corruption in the allocation of land in KwaNdengezi by Nqola, one of the gangster councillors in the ANC in Durban.

After a long struggle Nqola was arrested, along with another ANC councillor, Luvelile Lutshelu, and charged with the murder of Thuli and one other person. They are still in and out of the Durban High Court on these charges. We will continue to struggle to ensure that justice is served. Without struggle the lives of people who are poor and black count for nothing in this country.

We know that Thuli’s spirit has never died and that she continues to struggle with us. Thuli is not the only comrade to have given her life for the struggle. Nqobile Nzuza was executed with a shot to the back of the head by a well-known police officer on the 30 September 2013. Nkululeko Gwala was assassinated on the 26th of June 2013 and Thembinkosi Qumbela was assassinated on 15 March 2013. There has been no justice for these murders.

We are not the only people in South Africa for whom death continues to be the price that has to be paid for insisting on our dignity. The whole world knows that thirty four striking miners were murdered by the state at Marikana on the 16th of August 2014. More than fifty people have been killed by the police during street protests since 2 000. More than 450 political assassinations have been documented in KwaZulu-Natal. NUMSA has also lost members to assassination in KwaZulu-Natal. Last week Jabulani Sokhela, from the New Germany settlement in Reservoir Hills, died while trying to escape a violent police attack on a road blockade at the Quarry Road settlement in Clare Estate. If you are poor and black and you organise outside of the ANC you are taken as a person that can be killed with impunity. Your life does not count as the life of a human being. If you do not accept that a human being should be left to live like a pig in the mud you can be killed like a dog.

Murder is not the only form of repression against members of our movement. Some of our members have been assaulted and tortured by the police. Some of us have lost our land, our homes and our belongings at the hands of ruling party thugs acting with the support of the state and the police. Some of us have lost jobs and have been blacklisted from access to work and to state development. Many of us will only be able to access land, water, sanitation and electricity outside of the state (and the market) for as long as we remain in the struggle. There has also been the constant production of defamation and character assassination trying to show us to the world as criminals who are being used by others.

The Annual Thuli Ndlovu lecture will be held to honour all those who have fallen in the struggle and all those who have suffered repression and the vandalisation of their humanity at the hands of the state, the ruling party and other regressive forces. We are going to remind the government of the day of its responsibility to protect its citizens even if they are critical of the state and the ruling party. We are going to remind all other forces that claim to be progressive of their human duty to stand with all those who face repression when they stand up for their dignity as human beings.

Today each time we act justly we act fearfully. We are constantly reminded that we risk death while the politicians and the greedy prosper. Today it is our time to honour our heroes by intensifying our struggle against all forms of repression, corruption and indignity that exist in our society. Land, cities, wealth and power must be shared fairly. There will be nothing for us without us.

The lecture forms part of our Tenth Year Celebration of our movement to be held on the 3 October 2015.  The lecture will take place on the 24th of September 2015 at Prince Edward Hall (Hindu Surat Foundation Hall), from 10:00 to 11 a.m. The movement has invited S’bu Zikode to give the first lecture. The time to reflect on the journey travelled despite the politic of blood has come.

Contact:

TJ Ngongoma 084 6139772

Zandile Nsibande 062 9471 947

MaMkhize Nxumalo 078 4332719

Ndabo Mzimela 076 6066176